Stop Sending Me Phone Books!

An open letter to Canpages and Telus:

Dear stupid people,

Recently I have noticed that you have decided to leave large paper phone books at the front door of my suite; not the door of my building, but the actual door to my home.  Telus, I know you probably have a key to the building, but I don't imagine it was given to you for the purpose of spamming me with a massive wad of paper.  Canpages, I have no idea how you got in, but I'm sure it wasn't entirely above board however you did it.

Regardless, I'm not writing this to chastise you for scamming your way into my apartment building.  That is beside the point.  All I want is for you to stop giving me phone books.  Forever.

I still have the phone books that Telus left here before I moved in.  Would you like to hazard a guess as to how many times I have consulted them in the past year and a half?

Go on ... take a guess.  Don't be shy.  I'm going to post a nice picture I found using this cool new thing called "The Internet" ... you just push that down arrow button when you want to see the answer.

Ready for the answer?

If you guessed any number other than absolute fucking zero, you are incorrect.  I'm not exaggerating here, fellas.  There is a nice layer of dust coating those phone books on top of my bookcase.

The following year, I received a new Telus phone book.  Where is this phone book now?  Good question!  I kind of lost touch with it after I put it directly in the recycling bin.  I found it kind of odd that I received a Telus phone book having not been a Telus customer in over five years, but rather than make a big fuss about it, I opted to simply dispose of it and never give it any more thought.

Perhaps you phone book people somehow took offence to this and decided to escalate, because this year I received not only a Telus phone book, but a Canpages phone book as well.  Pretty much the only thing I want less than a phone book is two phone books.  Maybe Canpages figured that since I didn't care for the Telus phone book, they would be able to swoop in and win me over with pretty much the exact same useless product with a different picture on the cover.

I don't know why I decided to be upset by phone books this year.  Maybe because it's 2010 and the idea of owning a paper phone book seems to make about as much sense as owning a cassette deck or a spinning wheel.  Maybe I finally snapped after decades of phone book oppression.  Maybe it's simply because two phone books don't fit easily in my recycling bin.  Whatever the case may be, it's time for phone books to stop.  Permanently.

I do not want a phone book.  I have NEVER wanted a phone book, and I certainly will never need a phone book in the future.  There is no scenario I can possibly imagine in which I would need a phone book.  Believe me, I have tried.  The best I could come up with is the following list of conditions that all need to occur at the same time:

• The internet is down
• The power is out
• My Blackberry's battery is dead
• Roving packs of wild, carnivorous animals are roaming the city and preventing me from leaving my home
• A Special Ops trained sniper will shoot me if I step out onto my balcony
• A Telus employee has arrived at my home, and I need something big and heavy to hit them with

Even in that case, I'd probably much rather use a cast iron skillet or a dictionary.

Let's get real here, phone book pimps.  We all know that phone books are useless.  We all know that Google killed the phone book a decade ago.  People have been playing along every time you distribute your yellow paper spam every year so as not to hurt your feelings, but enough is enough.  We all know why you make phone books.  It's certainly not to help us find shit, because the Internet absolutely kills at that.  Let's call a spade a spade.  It's a giant wad of ads.  The entire thing is ads.  In a bizarre acknowledgement that most people are probably never going to open the phone book, you have even seen fit to put ads on the front and back covers, the spine, and even pressed into the page edges.

Fine.  I get it.  You are trying to make money like everyone else.  You're trying to ride this gravy train until your ad buying customers figure out that a total of twenty six people on Earth still use phone books, and that they may as well be giving their money to a family of racoons instead.  Until that time, if you could do me and every other semi-intelligent person on the planet a favour and just put the phone books directly in the recycling bin instead of marching them up to our homes, we'd all appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Everyone